The Brotherhood of Dragons
by Under a Blue Pen
Summary: Imagine a world without Pokemon... The brotherhood have made it their lives work to protect each and every Pokemon, but when the entire species comes under threat, they decide to take action. In a world where the difference between having a Pokemon and not is decided by how deep you dig your trenches, the brothers will meet some serious adversity. Enjoy!


Pain and loss.

I held the dead Bulbasaur in my arms. My Bulbasaur. I stroked its Aborigine textured, blue-green skin, growing cold with the chill of recent death, body tense with the quick onset of rigor mortis. The green, lettuce-like growth which protruded from the Bulbasaur's vertebrae was dead too, now wilted like a rose, crumbled and discoloured, it folded on itself.

Disease and disaster.

The Plague had struck, without warning, all Pokémon types dead or mortally endangered. The brotherhood, to which I belonged, and the Pokémon they had sworn to protect, now dead, were devastated. Our crop, our quarry, our burden, now broken by the evil pestilence. The disease affected all Pokémon, the story was the same in every village, every town, every gym – every brotherhood like our own. All but the Dragons.

Preparation and fortitude.

There were those who had seen the plague coming, seen the storm-clouds brewing amongst the Pokémon, biologically, the high tide of irreversible and unavertible genetic catastrophe. Those who knew of the plague, and who had a dragon-type Pokémon, set out fortifications and dug their trenches deep. The dragons, with the absence of all other Pokémon were a coveted resource. Just to touch a real, live Pokémon became an honour, and people paid well for it. The men and women with the wealth and power to own a dragon became more so, and with their wealth and power, so their fortifications grew ever stronger. But the brotherhood had a plan.

Building and training.

We built ourselves after the plague, built of our bodies a temple exalting excellence, a machine excelling in violence. We built of ourselves fighters, warriors; ninjas of the highest esteem. Reflexes as fast as lightning, the accuracy of a cobra and stealth like the quickly-vanishing smoke of an extinguished candle. We learnt to melt into the night, or disappear in an empty room, to walk floors as if treading air, making less noise than a stiff breeze. We chose our target wisely, the closest enclosure, containing a single, closely guarded dragon. Walls high, corridors straight and bare, guarded by a sheer army of fighting robots. For us, what we were, what we had become, there would be no struggle.

Stealth and approach.

Though we relied on stealth and agility, we suited up with thick lead and Kevlar – the first wave of robots would be, no doubt, armed to the mouthpiece, and scores of them would be guarding the entrance hall. The three of us, Daies, Markon and myself, scaled the outside walls with ease, covering the 50ft elevation of sheer granite in a matter of seconds. The Kevlar masked our heat so that we did not trigger any early-detection alarms. With the walls behind us, the grand entrance gate loomed ahead.

Entering and breaking.

The only way past the robots would be surprise. Given time to calculate a situation and compute its outcomes, the AI would be deadly. We would attack with all our speed, all our skill. Most importantly, all our brains. Markon took off his small rucksack and removed the only item it contained. Markon taped the C4 strip into the parting of the doors. The huge doors opened outwards, so we intended to blow them open. Daies and I stood back, he took the right door and I took the left; we needed not to be seen and most importantly, we needed to be well clear of the doors, which would soon be moving at quite some speed. Markon crouched, perfectly in line with the parting between the doors, just far enough so that the doors wouldn't hit him. From a side pocket, Markon removed a trigger and held it in his right hand. Laying his left palm against the floor, Markon stared straight ahead, at the parting of the doors – and squeezed the trigger home

Everything seemed to run in slow motion. Almost as soon as Markon had pulled the trigger, the C4 exploded. A fireball expanded from where the white plastic-y substance had once been. This shattered the huge lock on the front door. The energy of the explosion pushed the doors away, but as they, strategically, opened outwards, they would only back so far. For maybe half a beat, the doors swung against their holdings, but, as we had intended, they couldn't be held there, and so sprung backwards. The doors flew open. As soon as they were wide enough Markon sprung upwards.

Using springs that had been specially fitted into his suit, Markon leapt upwards a huge distance, managing to land on the huge vaulted ceiling, about 10 feet away and around 18 feet up. Neither Daies nor I moved.

Inside the entrance hall around 500 robotic brains whirred, 1000 optic sensors rotated, 500 heads turned. As expected a massive army of defending robots occupied the hall. The robots had no idea what to make of what was happening. We had purposefully choreographed something visually stunning to confuse the AI – first the door was blown open from the _outside_ and now a small shape was crouched on the ceiling. Markon fiddled a little with his utility belt until he retrieved a deodorant-sized cylinder.

Still attached to the ceiling, Markon pushed a button atop the cylinder and dropped it, letting it fall to the centre of the group of robots. The EMP grenade flashed twice before it detonated.

A sphere of brilliant yellow light shot out in a fuzz from the cylinder, a cloud of beta particles spreading out rapidly from the centre. And, being an EMP grenade, every robot that was touched by the cloud flickered, before collapsing, all its fuses having been blown.

Markon dropped from the ceiling, cape flowing in the free-fall, until he landed amongst the decommissioned army. Daies and I ran forward to meet him. Promptly, we all shed our Kevlar and our protective clothing – our reflexes would protect us far more than an inch of reinforced fibre. From within our backpacks, the three brothers brought out our weapons, three KRISS submachine guns.

I gripped the Super-V to my chest, wrapped my left hand around the fore-grip and my right around the handle, curling my index finger over the trigger, easing out the slack – the next time I pulled it would be a bang.

Markon, Daies and I made up a breach position: I leaned against the wall to the left of the next door, the door leading to the corridor which would eventually lead to our prize, and Daies took up the right. Markon again stood before the door. The doors in the complex were specifically designed to stop thieves – if the AI were to detect in intruder, it would seal all of the doors along corridors leading to the enclosure. All doors in the complex were 2-foot thick blast doors, but the brotherhood had an answer to all the problems we knew of.

All of our boots were fitted with a device, a technology developed for PMCs on raiding operations. The device, a Resonance Breacher, worked by subsiding the target: if the device hit a target hard enough, it would emit a noise at the resonant frequency of the target, weakening it enough that any impact would shatter it.

We utilized the technology with our own twist.

Markon took a few steps back, then ran at the door. A few paces away he leapt into the air, one foot outstretched. Markon hit the door, and the Resonance Breaker activated, emitting a low, thrumming noise. As the rest of his weight arrived, the blast door splintered and exploded outwards.

Immediately, the robots filling the next corridor started firing. Their arms ended in four barrels, which whistled out machine gun bullets at an alarming rate. The corridors were long and straight offering no cover, and now that the AI had responded to us, we had only our wits to defend us. The robot army made a formidable enemy. With our weapons switched to semi-automatic Daies and I turned into the corridor and began return fire.

As part of our training, the brotherhood had become expert marksmen. The super-V system of our KRISSs effectively negated the blowback, bringing it firmly into our shoulders instead of up and away from our targets. The .45 caliber ammunition produced the sound and feeling of power. Clunk, a robot fell. Clunk, a metal carcass hit the floor.

Our training had brought us to such perfection, we were one-shot-kill marksmen. We knew where to hit, an area just above their glowing optical sensors which housed their robotic brain. Due to our concentration, we didn't waste a single round. We felled the robots like a trees in a forest fire, the flurry of bullets left 39 mounds of useless metal (each of our magazines contained 13 bullets). However, there had been 40 in the corridor o begin with.

The AI in its robotic brain whirred – the robot had run out of ammunition, and clacked it wrist-mounted machine guns uselessly. Daies crouched in the middle of the corridor, and Markon stood just in front of him. I knew what I had to do.

Running up the back of Daies, using it to push off, I bounded onto Markon's shoulders, where I leapt forward. The sole of my boot connected with the metallic carapace of the robot attacker, and the Resonance Breacher activated.

I bounced off and turned around. The robot stood frozen for a few seconds, before shattering like sugar-glass.

Daies, Markon and I briefly retook our breath. We had almost done it! The Haxorus was just beyond that door.

As one, as brothers, we turned. I kicked harshly and the blast doors fell away.

As one, as brothers, our breaths hitched.

There it was. The Haxorus stood in the middle of the room. Two sturdy legs held it on the ground, Its three toed grey feet, splayed to bear its weight, red claws glinting in the artificial light of the enclosure. The legs connected about halfway up the Haxorus' green and grey body – a rounded, reptilian form, with a long segmented tail which curved away. The Haxorus' grey breastplate rose and fell with each breath it took. The upper body had a pair of small arms, which appeared feeble in comparison to the rest, much like the arms of a T-Rex. From the Haxorus' back were folded away titanic wings – as folded they were huge, so once unfurled they must be enormous. Its neck led to an angular, smooth head with harsh red eyes. From each cheek sprouted a large horn, shaped much similarly to that of a large axe-head.

But it was the sheer scale of the dragon. In the enclosure the Haxorus wasn't even standing entirely upright, and yet Markon, Daies and I stood on each others shoulders could not make up its height.

The Haxorus was contained here, chained. A ring was fastened around its neck, and to the ring were hefty chains locked to the floor. Whilst Markon was sent over to operate the Hanger door controls, Daies and I began to free the beast.

We walked over to the chains, taking on each, and stamped on them with our Resonance Breachers, snapping the chains. The beast was unleashed.

The Haxorus unleashed a might roar which seamed to shake the whole building, apparently pleased with its newfound freedom.

The huge hanger doors, which made up the ceiling, began to slide open and Markon hurried over. We mounted the Haxorus – there was easily enough space for all of us on its back – just as the AI realized that we were in the hanger.

Suddenly, all of the blast doors flew open and hundreds, if not thousands, of robots piled in.

Anger seemed to rile inside the Haxorus at the sight of its captor's minions. It unleashed a second monstrous below, the shockwave of which knocked over a swathe in the robotic legion.

I could tell the AI was confused: should it attack us, and risk harming what it was designed to protect, or, since we were now on the Haxorus, was the Haxorus an enemy, as it had indeed just caused damage.

The Haxorus swung its head to the left, so that its giant axe-shaped horn ran through the robots. It is said that the horns of a Haxorus can run through solid steel and remain sharp, and we saw its devastating effects first hand. Another swathe, this time of about fifty robots, was destroyed, cut in half at torso-level, sending hemi-robots flying in all directions.

The AI made its collective decision.

All of the robots cocked their weapons and began firing at the Haxorus – but we were already leaving.

The Haxorus spread its leviathan wings and swooped them down, causing a blast of air which knocked over many of the robots and catapulted the Haxorus into the air.

There was nothing now that the robots could do, we had won. We sailed through the sky, the wind buffeting our faces. Nothing could we compare to the thrill of controlling one of the last remaining Pokemon.

* * *

**Author's notes:**

**- Please don't tell me that Haxorus doesn't have wings, I know that, I just wanted to make it even more awesome!**

**- Hope you enjoyed my first ever fan-fic, and don't forget to review.**

**- I have decided that I will be continuing this story, so stay tuned, folks!**


End file.
